Actress and Humanitarian Mary Tyler Moore Dies at 80

The New York Times reports that Mary Tyler Moore, star of The Dick van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died in Greenwich, Connecticut, on January 25, 2017. She was 80 years old.

As the star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Moore became a feminist icon by introducing the character of an independent, career-focused single woman to American television.

“She only wanted to play a great character, and she did so,” said author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, who wrote a book on the actress, to the Times. Armstrong continued:

“That character also happened to be single, female, over 30, professional, independent, and not particularly obsessed with getting married. Mary had America facing such issues as equal pay, birth control, and sexual independence way back in the ’70s.”

Beyond her work as an actress, Moore wrote two memoirs and was active in charity work for animal rights and type 1 diabetes, which she was diagnosed with at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Her official cause of death was complications due to pneumonia.